


'Cause I Just Want You Here Tonight, Holding On to Me So Tight

by theonlywaterintheforest



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crack, F/M, Fluff and Crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 14:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5500670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theonlywaterintheforest/pseuds/theonlywaterintheforest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What? You used to love this song,” River offered, smiling up at her husband as the diva’s voice made its first appearance. “Loved it an awful lot, in fact.”</p><p>“Don’t remind me,” the Doctor spat through a jaw held so tightly it didn’t move at all. He tried to pick up the pace, but she wouldn’t let him. </p><p>Turnabout’s fair play: she very much looked forward to making him endure four whole minutes of the song he used to torture her with on a regular basis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Cause I Just Want You Here Tonight, Holding On to Me So Tight

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys asked Santa for a little bit of crackfic this Christmas. The idea popped into my head one day and it just would not leave. I had to write it. It had to be done. 
> 
> Set about a week after the events of "Husbands of River Song". The Doctor and River want to keep the post-Christmas "honeymoon phase" alive, so they're just going to different Christmases in different years and different places.

River Song nuzzled into her husband’s shoulder as they walked down a busy Chicago street on a blustery mid-December night, just a few days after their reunion on Mendorax Dellora. She could feel the Doctor tighten up a bit the more she pressed into him for warmth from the biting breeze—he was still trying to get used to the constant physical touch she so desired, but he was slowly coming around. His brain and his heart wanted it and he was working on getting his body to accept it. She could get him to crumble and give in entirely if she really wanted to (as she had several times already in the few short days since they reunited), but she understood what a regeneration could change and she didn’t want to force him to do something that he couldn’t exactly control. After shivering into his shoulder a couple times she gave him a bit of space, loosely holding onto his upper arm instead. She could feel him relax instantly.

In an attempt to make their happy Christmas last a bit longer, they were on their way to a party, one thrown by one of River’s old friends from Luna, who immigrated to the Midwest of the United States to study the ancient floors of the Great Lakes. Downtown Chicago was always busy, but never more busy than it was on a weekend before Christmas, so they had to park the TARDIS near Navy Pier and walk their way into the heart of the city. They passed small welcoming shops and cozy little restaurants, taking in the joy of people celebrating the upcoming holidays, but nowhere did River find more joy than when they passed by an outdoor skating rink. It was packed to the brim of festive folk taking advantage of the unusually cold December, laughing and twirling and trying not to fall. River couldn’t help but smile at all the happy couples and laughing families out on the ice. She tightened her grip on the Doctor’s arm and was pleased to see he didn’t tense up at all.

But that was short lived. At first, River wondered what she had done to cause his muscles to instantly freeze, but she recognized the first twinkling notes of a new song that came out of the ice rink’s sound system. 

_I don’t want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need…_

“What? You used to love this song,” River offered, smiling up at her husband as the diva’s voice made its first appearance. “Loved it an awful lot, in fact.”

He didn’t respond for quite few seconds, but she could see a tic on his temple. River continued to glare at him as they walked, raising an eyebrow as she waited for a response. “Don’t remind me,” the Doctor finally spat through a jaw held so tightly it didn’t move at all. He tried to pick up the pace, but she wouldn’t let him. Turnabout’s fair play: she very much looked forward to making him endure four whole minutes of the song he used to torture her with on a regular basis. 

“There were several times you nearly drove me to knocking you unconscious just so I could stop you from playing it.” 

“I wish you had,” he grumbled.

The pace of the song quickened, and Mariah Carey blared out into the Chicago sky. The Doctor decided that even 50 seconds of this song was now quite enough and he flailed about— _not unlike his last face,_ River mused—trying to get his wife to remove her hand from his arm, so he could grasp onto her hand. She smirked when she noticed he was trying to remove one touch for another, especially one he kept grousing about. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I can’t take any more of this.”

_Don’t care about those presents underneath the Christmas tree…_

River knew there was a reason she wore boots with heavy heels this evening. She stopped suddenly and lowered herself into a more active stance, digging her heels into the concrete beneath her. He wasn’t prepared for it, so when he kept walking he eventually reached the end of his rope and was pulled back suddenly. He threw his face to the air, jamming his eyes and his jaw shut, to cry out in silent pain. She held her stance as the crowd beside them all walked by. She waited for him to forget his pain, to wait for him to look her in the eyes. After a few expletives rolled in his mouth (she was still taken aback every time she heard this mouth swear), he finally turned back to glare at his wife. It was a deathly glare. A teasing excitement, high and bright, danced around her chest. “What did you do that for?” 

Oh, how River wished she could catalogue his voice when he got cross. It was gorgeous. Now only did it dip low, it actually _rumbled_. She tried not to let it show how much it excited her. She kept her smirk steady and tightened her grasp on his hand instead.

“I plan to making you suffer, old man.”

_Santa Claus won’t make me happy with a toy on Christmas day…_

She watched the dread slowly make its way across the Doctor’s weathered features. He tried to pull his hand from her grip, but they were locked. River was sure her knuckles were white from holding his hand so tightly. 

“River, please—“

She turned her head to the side and laughed once, high and taunting. “How many times— _how many non-Christmas times_ —did you put me through hour-long listening sessions to this song and only this song?” 

“River!” he cried loudly. People stared at them as they walked past. “I’m not him! I’m not. I’m no longer Bowtie. _Please!_ ” 

_I won’t ask for much this Christmas, I won’t even wish for snow…_

“I hate this song as much as you do now! _River_!”

A rather malicious smile slowly crept across River’s face. “Never,” she whispered darkly, now digging her long, red nails into the palm of his hand through their gloves. 

“This is cruel!” he hissed only loud enough for her to hear. His accent was getting thicker the more upset he became. “I should report you to the Shadow Proclamation. Surely they’d find you guilty of some sort of universe-wide reign of terror for this. You are a danger to known society, Song.”

Ooh, danger? She could do danger. 

He desperately continued his futile attempt to pry her fingers from their death grip on his hand. He didn’t even notice that she had started to slowly sway her hips to the music. “I won’t even stay awake to hear those magic reindeer click—“

His head snapped up. What was dread in his eyes was now pure terror. “Oh, do _not_ start singing now.”

Of course, she increased the volume. “’Cause I just want you here tonight—“

“River! Could you _just_ —” he pleaded, still working on the vice-like clutch of her hand. He really wasn’t getting anywhere.

“Get louder?” she finished for him. “You know how I can scream. I can definitely do louder.”

“ _Don’t you dare_!” he snapped, stepping up so close that the backs of each of their hands were touching each other’s chests. River nearly purred at the contact, still so foreign with this face. She pitched herself just a bit more forward so her hand pressed more deeply into his ribcage and his into the swell of her breasts. He didn’t tighten up any more than he had already and she was just a couple inches away from his face. She hadn’t meant for this to happen but she had discovered another way to get him to touch her without recoil: make him cross. 

She bit her lip and started to sway her hips even more than before. His angry, angry eyebrows furrowed so deeply they were nearly touching. “All the lights are shining—“

“Stop it.”

“—so brightly everywhere—“

“Stop.”

“—and the sound of children’s laughter—“

She did stop singing, but not of her own accord. He had quickly pulled their locked fingers up to his face and bit down on one of her knuckles through her leather gloves. It wasn’t a hard bite (although it probably would leave a mark on her gloves), but she was so shocked she immediately loosened her grip on his hand to pull her hand to her own chest. The very second her hand was out of his he swung around quickly and darted into the middle of a large crowd. She should have known, should have _anticipated_ , that he’d run the second he had the opportunity. He had been running for millennia now. He had plenty of practice. Unfortunately for him, his wife may have had even more practice, having spent most of her formidable years training to become one of the best assassins in the universe. She could dart and dash better than he could, and within just a couple seconds she had a strong arm around his gangly frame, pulling him back into her chest with a crushing hug. The Doctor whimpered out a rather pathetic series of "No no no no no” while River smirked at the people around them who stared at the couple with confusion across their features. 

Instead of just swaying her hips, she swung her entire body so he had no choice but to sway with her. He was mortified and held one hand to his face as he stiffly swayed to the music. 

She continued her singing, which was even louder than it had been before. “Santa, won’t you bring me the one I really need—“

And he stopped. This was different than the kind of humiliated rigidity he had just seconds before. No, this was a realization. She could also feel it in her connection with him, sensing a bright jade green light shooting about his chest rapidly. 

“What?” she asked, rising up on her tiptoes so she could be closer to his right ear. 

He turned his head to the side so he could sort of make eye contact with her. Okay, she had to be imagining the sparkle in his blue-grey eyes. That wasn’t right. Sparkling? Right now? “Keep singing. And think about it.”

Just going along with it, she continued. “I don’t want a lot for Christmas, this is all I’m asking for,” she sang, letting the words show up in her head. “I just want to see my baby—“

“—standing right outside my door,” he finished, speaking the words in a low grumble instead of singing them. 

River’s grip around the Doctor’s middle slackened as the words hit her fully, like a slap across the face. How many times had she heard this song? Hundreds of times. Maybe thousands. She knew the words without thinking, and yet she hadn’t _thought_ about them as she sang to him as loudly as she could. 

In her daze the Doctor was able to turn in her arms. Much to her surprise he wrapped one arm around her waist and placed the other on her cheek, stroking her cheekbone with his thumb. “Go on, say it,” he rumbled tenderly, low and deep. It was basically a purr and she very nearly melted on the spot. Instead she pressed her chest into his and looked up to the wide, rather mischievous smirk plastered across his narrow face. 

She tried to ignore the prickling at the corner of her eyes. Twenty-four years without him, and here he was: “Make my wish come true: ‘cause baby, all I want for Christmas—”

“—is you,” he finished far more quickly than Mariah did. Before River could even respond he pressed his mouth to hers with a bruising kiss that bent her backward in his arms. She responded with a giggle bubbling against his lips before she opened them slightly. He responded in kind, with his other arm making its way to join the other, pulling her more tightly against him as he dipped her a bit further backward. 

Nothing else mattered in that moment. Not the children laughing on the rink, not the couples snuggling closer in the chilly breeze, not the teenagers wolf-whistling at them. On that cold, snowy December night, it was just River and her husband—reunited as the universe granted their Christmas wishes at long last—and Mariah Carey.

_Maybe this song isn’t so bad after all._

**Author's Note:**

> I have honestly hated this song since it first came out in 1994 (yes, I'm old enough to remember when it started assaulting our eardrums daily during the Christmas season), but relating it to these silly little lovebirds' reunion made it tolerable. No, likeable. 
> 
> So thank you, Steven Moffat. You have saved hundreds of people from hearing me cry out in anguish whenever this song starts to play.


End file.
